And, my word, did their social media team play a blinder, responding to the predictable flurry of tedious detractors with patience, humour and a smile, not to mention the brilliant weary verbal eye-roll directed at the most tiresome of the nation’s professional trolls.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s worth checking out Greggs responses to dissenters — as well as the tweets the Newcastle-based bakers were sent, if you can, where they haven’t been deleted by the remorseful, furious or spineless senders — and check out the #vegansausageroll hashtag too.

What you’ll see, if you do so, is some extraordinary annoyance and frustration. The moaners fell into two broad categories, with the idiots concentrated in the first:

1/ Meat eaters accusing Greggs of pandering to “snowflakey” vegan sensibilities instead of exclusively catering to their traditional and far more important dietary requirements and WHY DO VEGANS WANT TO EAT SOMETHING THAT REMINDS THEM OF MEAT ANYWAY.

2/ Coeliacs and other gluten-avoiding eaters asking for / demanding / ranting about the absence of a GF sausage roll, some with an acute sense of entitlement, and apparently bitter that the so-called lifestyle choice of veganism was being given priority to the usual medical need of GF.

I addressed some of the coeliac vs vegan issues in a post I wrote last year, which I stand by, and won’t rewrite here. But briefly, there is no point in getting upset at food service providers catering for restricted diets of all colours and denominations, even if they are not useful to us as individuals, because it broadens public awareness and choices for all on the ‘free from’ spectrum, and we all — coeliacs, food allergy folk, food intolerance folk, vegans and vegetarians, and their advocates — will get more from the world when we stick together and not try to enforce a pecking order of importance in our community.

What the response to Greggs’ campaign has shown is that we still have some way to go in normalising ‘free from’ in our society and the lack of understanding of those on restricted diets (for whatever reason) persists.

If you’re angry at vegans who are happy at a new high-street choice, you’d do well to ask yourself why other people’s joy infuriates. This sort of attitude threatens people’s rights and safety, and we should continue to advocate for better awareness. We cannot be annoyed at the introduction of vegan or vegetarian choices, unless they jeopardise allergy or coeliac choices … and yes, this is something we should keep an eye on, for instance, if production of an allergy-safe vegan product has to be upscaled to a larger factory to meet new increased demand, sacrificing allergy-friendliness in the process.

While Pret have been under extreme pressure to improve allergy labelling in the wake of the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, Greggs have gone largely untroubled in this regard, and yet all I saw during a recent visit to my local branch were a few generic allergy notices — considerably poorer than Pret’s on-shelf ’14 allergens’ labelling and upcoming full product labelling.

For a brand of this size, this needs to change. Let’s see what 2019 brings.

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8 Comments

Tess jonesMarch 7, 2019 at 10:37 am

Hi I have been suffering from severe reactions to QUORN since it was first introduced to The UK in various guises in supermarket ready meals (notably, Sainsbury’s).
Quorn products are made not from mushrooms, but from a fungus o, the Latin name for the fungus used to make Quorn products is fusarium venenatum – which means “venomous” or “poisonous”,
IN FACT the direct translation from Latin is: KILLING MUSHROOM.

Please do. I have had 3 serious attacks from unknowingly eating Quorn – and I had no idea the Greggs roll contained Quorn so it’s lucky I didn’t try it. A website about allergies should definitely have an article about Quorn.

Hi Alex
I too have an allergy to Quorn. Originally I had their vegan sausage when it first came out. I asked a member of staff who told me it was soya based. I was not ill then but last week I brought one and was left vomiting for hours, I thought that maybe I had a stomach bug. After buying another this weekend and having the same reaction I looked online to check their ingredients and put two and two together. I contacted them through social media to ask if they had changed the ingredients and suggested that they make it more obvious at the counter of the ingredients. They have called me and said that they will be putting this forward in meetings so that their allergen labelling would be more visible. I do hope they do this. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

Sorry to hear this. I’ve not been in for a while, but I may conduct a little ‘review’ in January to see whether any improvements have been made. Is it just Quorn you’re allergic to? Soya is an allergen so would have had to be declared by them had it been present, but a false declaration of an allergen is clearly problematic, in multiple ways, as you’ve found. Let’s hope for better soon … All the best, Alex.

I am allergic to Quorn too! Because quorn is “new”, I don’t think there is enough evidence proving that it is a serious allergen. In a few years time they might find it is as dangerous as sesame or nuts. The only other allegy I have is penicillin. Interestingly, both Quorn and penicillin are black moulds!

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